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In Indiana, 61,492 children were reported to Child Protective Services for child maltreatment in 2003.

National CPS News Archive

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A woman who made several false rape allegations, including one that saw an innocent man jailed for seven years, has been convicted.

A woman who made several false rape allegations, including one that saw an innocent man jailed for seven years, has been convicted. Jemma Beale's bogus complaints led to Mahad Cassim serving some of his sentence after she falsely claimed he raped her in November 2010.

Child welfare agencies were created to promote the safety and well-being of children. They investigate cases of family violence, child abuse, and neglect, and when necessary, they take protective action.

The goal of social workers is to keep children with their families when it is deemed safe and to provide them with a safe environment when they are determined to be at risk. Unfortunately, many cases are ignored or mishandled in such a way that the abused child continues to suffer. When social workers fail to act, the consequences can be deadly. Their negligence in these cases makes them almost as culpable as the perpetrators.

If you've ever been visited by Child Protective Services, you know just how stressful and distressing it can feel. Even the best of parents can get frazzled when someone with the legal authority to take aware their kids is present.

Unfortunately, unless your civil rights are violated, you likely won't have any legal claim against Child Protective Services stemming from the agency's, or its representatives', routine actions. So, you likely won't be able to sue for emotional distress. However, when civil rights are violated, individuals can sue CPS, and these claims can be costly for cities.

A measure seeking to untie home-schooling from the regulatory eye of the Virgin Islands Board of Education won the favor of all senators gathered at the Frits E. Lawaetz Legislative Hall here on Monday.

Though the measure will be amended, senators generally agreed with the measure, with the bill's sponsor, Senator Novelle Francis - who said the bill was specifically for parents and guardians who home-school their children, and not the many learning centers throughout the territory that essentially operate as unlicensed private schools - pointing to the growing interest in home-schooling from parents throughout the territory.

As they have for the last three decades, First Nations advocates are again sharply criticizing the Canadian government for continuing to discriminate against First Nations children, and failing to fix its "broken" child welfare system.

Blackstock was in disbelief that despite two compliance orders since January, the government has done little to address a Human Rights Tribunal's findings that it is discriminating against First Nations children on reserve by giving them significantly less funding versus children in other areas of Canada-and that race and/or ethnic origin was a factor in that discrimination. Advocates have been lobbying the government on the issue since 1998 and numerous independent reports over the decades have called on the government to fix its system. "Why are they taking so long?" Blackstock asked.

Year-long investigation will hear from social workers, birth and adoptive family members and adult adoptees.

The prime minister has made it crystal clear in recent months that he wants to see more children adopted, faster. But following two landmark appeal court cases, the brakes are firmly on: family judges are applying the full rigour of statute to local authority evidence when applications are made for adoption placement orders. The result, much to some politicians' vocal displeasure, is that the number of children placed for adoption has fallen significantly.

Former Australian of the Year Rosie Batty is looking to make domestic violence an election issue by fronting a campaign to overhaul the family law system.

Among the changes being sought by advocates is a ban on alleged domestic violence perpetrators cross-examining their victims in court and for courts to consider any family violence history when determining how to divide property in a divorce settlement.

Stolen pay. Sexual harassment. Months without a paycheck. Outrageous fees and expenses that eat away at earnings. And no one to turn to for help.

Models allege that labor abuses like these run rampant in the modeling industry -- leaving many workers feeling more like indentured servants than the glamorous high fashion icons young girls around the world dream of becoming.

A federal judge in Mississippi on Thursday blocked a ban against same-sex couples adopting children, declaring that the law was unconstitutional and citing last summer's historic gay marriage ruling as the reasoning behind his decision.

The judge's preliminary injunction subsequently legalized the process in all 50 U.S. states, allowing same-sex couples everywhere the right to adopt. In his decision, U.S. District Judge Daniel Jordan wrote that to deny gay couples access to adoption services directly conflicted with the high court's earlier decision.

Would my son have come home sooner if someone had taken the time to know me? I was 19 when I was arrested for hitting my 2-year-old son with a belt.

What I did wasn't right and it wasn't how I usually treated my son. Usually I loved him to death and spoiled him rotten. I had never hit him before. But that night my son got out of his crib and ran out of the apartment while I was taking a shower. I felt so shocked and scared that I hit him twice on the arm with a belt and left a big mark.

Two major mainstream media sites (Washington Post and PBS) ran reports on the injustice of false Shaken Baby Syndrome diagnoses recently. Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) diagnoses have been used for many years now to falsely accuse parents.

For decades, when a child appeared in an emergency room with certain symptoms, including bleeding behind the eyes and bleeding around the brain, many doctors assumed violent shaking to be the cause. But in recent years, the Shaken Baby Syndrome diagnosis has come under intense scrutiny, and so have many of the resulting prosecutions and convictions.

An organic farmer was being raided so he posted a call for help on Facebook. Dozens showed up to face off with police -- and it worked.

Last month, 20 officials from the ministries of agriculture, natural resources and finance in Ontario, Canada raided Michael Schmidt's milk farm with the help of local police. They began removing equipment and computers, intending to confiscate them for the crime of providing raw milk to people who freely choose to drink it.

THE Royal Commissioner examining South Australia's child protection system has revealed plans to take evidence from 13 foster care or welfare agencies, but all hearings will be closed to the public.

At least two of the witnesses giving evidence say they would be happy to do so openly and the Opposition has called for open hearings to be the "default position", unless discussing details of sensitive child abuse cases. Applications can be made to the Commissioner, former Supreme Court Judge Margaret Nyland, for a hearing to be opened to the public or Justice Nyland can declare a hearing open if she believes the evidence is of public interest.

EDMONTON - A judge says an Edmonton foster mother did nothing that contributed to the death of a baby in her care four years ago.

Four-month-old Delonna Sullivan was found unresponsive in a bassinet on April 11, 2011, six days after social workers placed her in the foster home. An autopsy found the infant was healthy and the cause of her death was listed as unexplained.

The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection and the United States has signed a five- million dollar Child Protection Compact at the Flagstaff House in Accra.

Nana Oye Lithur said Ghana was selected because of the country's "strong government commitment, existing inter-ministerial framework and active civil society fighting child trafficking". She said Ghana has proved that it has the potential to reduce child trafficking through improved coordination and enhanced investigations and prosecutions.

Vulnerable teenagers are being moved through dozens of refuges and foster homes after being forced to leave their biological parents, putting them at risk of sexual abuse, the royal commission into child sex abuse has heard.

As the commission continued its examination of child sexual abuse in Australia's Out of Home Care system on Monday, four youths spoke about their experiences in care and the roles they now play as advocates for others in the same situation.

The very name 'Child Protective Services' denotes that they are supposed to protect the child. According to Nehemiah Flynt, author of Legal Discrimination, it is all a huge lie we have been told.

He contends that he discovered in time that it was all a lie. A few children actually did come from homes where abuse or neglect of some sort happened. Most of the children were not from that type of situation, though. According to Flynt, most of the children that came through his door were taken from their homes for reasons that seemed too innocuous to even involve CPS. Some of these reasons include: parents arguing in public, a child punching a wall, or parents too scared to make their children attend school.

This story is yet another piece of evidence piling onto the mountain of support for cannabis oil and full marijuana legalization.

At 10 months of age, Kalel Santiago of Puerto Rico was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer called neuroblastoma. He endured chemotherapy, radiation treatments, and surgery for two years - and survived. Then he was diagnosed with something permanent: severe autism that disabled him from speaking.

A pervert has been convicted of abusing two under-age girls while they were in foster care.

Kevin Gillan had access to the youngsters - one of them aged just nine at the time - because he was staying in the house where they were placed for emergency respite care. The younger girl claimed Gillan groped her when she was alone in the living room with him.

A life-story record must be prepared in a bid to help ensure a four-year-old boy remembers his dying mother, a High Court judge has recommended.

With no other family members available to look after her child, the woman is disputing a Northern Ireland trust's opinion that adoption is in his best interests. She has voiced fears that her son's name would be changed and he may forget about her.

A new federal law today will award grant money to states that pass laws making it easier for victims of rape to strip their assailants of parental rights to children born out of rape.

The new Rape Survivor Child Custody Act, signed Friday by President Obama as part of the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, will incentivize states to pass their own laws mandating that in cases where it is clear that a baby was born out of an unwanted sexual encounter, the victim can have the attacker's parental rights terminated.

After the Swedish Supreme Administrative Court ruled that a family cannot homeschool their eight-year-old daughter because they do not have "extraordinary circumstances" surrounding their need to teach from home, they are appealing.

Once the Nordic nation amended its homeschooling law back in 2010 to virtually ban the practice altogether, homeschoolers have become virtually extinct there. Failure to homeschool one's child without permission in the country known for its Volvos and IKEA has landed families such stiff penalties that many have fled east to Finland, where homeschooling has not yet been targeted to the degree experienced in Sweden.

In a brightly-lit boardroom on the second floor of the offices of the Yellowknife Health and Social Services Authority, 25-year-old Dawn Blanchard is giving an update on the furniture she still needs to find for her new apartment.

Five months ago, Blanchard was homeless with a serious cocaine habit - part of a downward spiral that she says began soon after her son was taken away. Now she's working part-time and preparing a home for two children under the age of eight.

Britain's appalling couch potato lifestyle is one of the worst in the world, and could cause the collapse of the welfare state, bombshell report warns.

Couch potato lifestyles have left the UK with one of the lowest levels of activity in the western world, and without change, the welfare state could collapse, health officials have warned. A landmark report by Public Health England (PHE) says lack of exercise is as dangerous as smoking - directly contributing to one in six deaths.

The National Center for Youth Law (NCYL) filed a class action lawsuit today against Nevada Gov. Kenneth C. Guinn, state Health and Human Services Director Michael Willden, and Clark County officials for failing to protect the health and safety of children in Clark County's child welfare system.

Nancee Crowell, California and Nevada State Director of 'National Foster Parent Coalition for Allegation Reform' responds to an article written by Craig Schneider regarding Georgia CPS, expressing her outrage at the treatment of parents by Child Protection Agencies

Additional Resources

CPS Reform: What does it take to changeChildren are killed, children are horribly injured, children disappear and are lost, and often this happens despite the local child welfare agencies' prior knowledge of abuse and severe neglect.